Patterns

It takes a bit of effort to create seamless patterns (meaning patterns that will repeat without any obvious seams), but it definitely can be worth it. The idea here is to create a relatively small pattern that can be used to fill larger areas as the pattern repeats. Although there is a filter called Pattern Maker, its results can be less than ideal. I guess it depends on what you're looking for—if you want a very random pattern that doesn't resemble the original photo, then Pattern Maker might do the trick. But if you're trying to create a repeating pattern that preserves the detail in the photo, you'll probably have to create the pattern manually.

Defining a pattern is the easy part—just go under the Edit menu and choose Define Pattern. The harder part is creating a pattern that will be seamless. Here are the basics of the technique to manually create a seamless pattern: